b'A featured segment designed to share business-critical information to seed-selling professionals. Visit SeedWorld.com to download this department STRATEGY and other tools.Stay on Top of Your Game WhenIt Comes to Precision AgPrecision ag is continuously growing and changing, and experts say its important to stay on top of it to fully understand it. Joe Funk jfunk@issuesink.comFARMERS HAVEtradi- and sustainability require both tionally relied on experi- precision financial and agro-ence and historical knowledgenomic management. What we to make decisions eachare doing is taking what we season about their farmingare already doing and learning practices and the use of crophow to make it better. inputs. In the last 20 years,Agronomy drives financial unprecedented, low-costdecisions and the bottom line. access to real-time data hasPrecision machine operation changed farmers ability tocan enable the agronomic analyze data, practice preci- side. Over time, precision sion agriculture (PA) andfinancial decisions add up. automate their equipmentTaken together, they can help and devices via the internet.Ken OBrien serves as GranularBob Gunzenhauser serves asmaximize farmers profitability Precision agriculture isarea district sales manager.agronomy science lead atand ensure their long-term no longer a new idea, saysGranular. sustainability. These prac-Yu Zhang, research assistanttices use and generate large professor, Department ofand servo motors have beenGunzenhauser, agronomy sci- amounts of data obtained Agricultural and Biosystemsadded to farming equipmentence lead at Granular, a digitalfrom both internal and exter-Engineering, North Dakotato automate the applicationagriculture software businessnal sources. State University. It hasof inputs using prescriptions.of Corteva Agriscience. OneWhile the benefits of become the third wave of theWith the rapid introductioncamp is machine control:precision farming are limit-modern agricultural revolu- and adoption of mobile com- better seed placement, sprayerless, they are centered around tion. The first wave [was]puting, high-speed internet,and planter shut-offs, autoefficiency, cost savings, based on mechanization andand remote sensing from sat- steer, variable input applica- agronomic decision making, the second wave [was] basedellites, drones and unmannedtion, etc. The other is theand operator enhancement, on genetic modification. Toaircraft systems (UAS),financial information side thatsays Dan Halliday, digital and feed the projected globalthe reach of PA has grownhas a less obvious payback.precision solutions & telemat-population of 9.6 billion byimmensely, so much so that itSome years precision financialics product management at 2050, new technologies havetouches almost every area ofmanagement pays off well, inCNH Industrial. Before seed advanced agriculture includ- a farm operation. other years, it does not. It isis planted, we can monitor ing precision agriculture. much harder to have a picturesoil conditions with remote Since those early days ofPrecision Financial andof the effects of precisionsensing to collect data that PA, a wide range of sensors,Agronomic Management financial management thanhelps us determine how to monitors and controllers,When I think about precisionto have a picture of precisionapproach the planting season including shaft speed sen- agriculture, I split it into twomachine management. Longto ensure the seed has optimal sors, pressure transducersdifferent camps, says Bobterm, a growers profitabilitygermination and growth 30/ SEEDWORLD.COMDECEMBER 2019'